It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...

...well, something. Eagle Eye Eric noticed a blip on the radar this afternoon, but we knew there was no way it was rain. We only had those friendly puffy cumulus hanging around, and this particular blip was up around 7,000-8,000 feet - higher than the clouds! So we had to dig deeper.

Not only were they showing up sweep after sweep on our radar, the Weather Service radar was picking it up, too. The radar returns originated near Byron. Perhaps there was a burst of steam that came out of the power plant? Our newsroom did a bit of sleuthing and found out that the nuclear plant didn't do anything out of the ordinary, but did learn that somebody there had reported seeing some smoke on the way in (not at the plant, don't worry!). The Byron Fire Department said that the smoke was possibly from a controlled burn, although they weren't aware of any. Our friends over at the Chicago Weather Service said one of their data sources was showing a hotspot near Byron. They also were finding other hotspots were other blobs of reflectivity were showing up. Smoke plumes from burns seemed to be the answer...

... but wait! We're heading through springtime and birds are migrating en masse these days. Birds do, in fact, show up on radar on occasion. This blob on radar didn't seem like a smoke plume. It didn't spread out in a V-shape, originating from a specific point for a significant amount of time. Instead, it stayed about the same size, the whole thing moving north. The Milwaukee radar even was picking it up, moving steadily north without changing shape. If it was smoke, I suspect it would have dispersed by the time it got that far north.

So it was likely either birds or smoke... and here I was kind of beginning to wonder if Painter was going to get taken home. ;)